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Introducing the Curse $15,000 Skyrim Challenge!

Love the Elder Scrolls series and can’t wait for Skyrim? We do and we’re looking for mod authors to help us in making creative, useful, and imaginative mods to play with after the game launches! With the new skyrimforge.com, unleash your creativity with loads of development tools meant to streamline your mod-sharing process.

The first 35 uploaded Skyrim mods that meet our approval guidelines in each of the four main categories, will earn some phat loot to line the pockets of their authors!

Mods must be uploaded to skyrimforge.com by December 15th, and meet all criteria established by Curse moderators.

The categories and money rewards are as follows:

That’s a total of 140 mods that can potentially earn some cash! Want to enter more than one mod? No problem!

But wait...We’re also going to give an additional $3,000 to the author who creates the best mod, uploaded between now and December 15th, and voted the winner by Curse staff!

On December 17th, we’ll announce the grand prize winner and highlight their mod to the community as a thanks for all their hard work and dedication!

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Hey guys!
We're proud to announce that Skyrim and Oblivion will soon be integrated into our Curse Client! What we're looking for is a group of a testers who will be happy to grab this beta client and poke at every feature we have to give us as much detailed feedback as possible to make sure that this is the best product we could put out there!
Both Skyrim mods and Oblivion mods are acceptable for this, so feel free to upload any older mods you may have created! We want you to test every aspect possible for the best variety of feedback.
Features included in this beta test version will be:

Activation and Deactivation

Load Order sorting

Install and uninstall support

One click updates

Client-based addon discovery - Want more addons? Just click "Get More Addons" and select the proper game from the dropdown list!

Testing will begin <u>around Wednesday, November 30th</u>. Remember that this is just a first beta test as well; far more features are going to be implemented, especially ones that come from feedback from you guys!
PM me, Wishfire, if you are interested!

We at Curse are proud to announce that our Skyrim modding community based on SkyrimForge.com is growing strong!

We have over 60 mods available for download on our Skyrim mod portal and many more being planned for development once the creation kit is released. We've already given out $5,170 to the creative and hard working authors participating in our Skyrim $15k Modding Challenge! That means there's still almost $7,000 just waiting to be claimed by authors who are up to the task, plus the chance of winning the $3,000 grand prize.

If you're interested in participating, head over to SkyrimForge.com and start uploading. Any mod that is uploaded before January 31st, whether it qualifies as one of the first 35 mods uploaded for that category or not, is eligible to win the grand prize!

Also, keep an eye on SkyrimForge.com for more information on Skyrim Curse client integration! The feature is about to head into closed beta testing and there will be more news soon.

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Below we have two interviews from two different perspectives of the mod author community!

Both are talented modders who have provided some insight into modding without a toolkit!

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<div>Has it been difficult for you to mod without the toolkit?</div>
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<div>Nickoli002: Only to a certain extent. I have had to put some of my mods on hold since I cannot access the relevant files and have instead decided to do simple retextures/reskins of models in game. This is because it is very easy to access and identify the relevant files based on the item names and it requires relatively little knowledge to recolor/skin them for release.</div>
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<div>KenneyWings: Difficult - no. It's a lot of work get everything working since you're basically 'hacking' into the games resource files so you're bound to miss files or classes to work with. I just had the right tools to work with (I'm a Flash game developer/designer) and that helped the process get along without any hitches.</div>
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<div>Nickolo002, can you explain how you've been creating such high-quality textures? For example, your glass weapon recolors not only have tons of detail, but also fit in the world perfectly.</div>
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<div>nickoli002: They are simply of the same quality of the originals, the creators did a great job with this game, and it shows in the model quality. Compared to them, I am merely coloring them with crayons! But I do extensive checking in game to make sure all of the model colors fit together, that there is no odd discoloration or errors. I also switch genders (via the “sexchange” command in console) in game to make sure that they work and fit on both male and female characters.</div>
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<div>Can you explain how you are finding the individual texture files, and applying your new textures?</div>
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<div>nickoli002: Well the first step is to identify what model you want. Once that is done I use FOMM (Fallout Mod Manager) to browse the .bsa files located in the Skryim folder. Weapon and Armor models (as well as all textures) are located in the Skyrim – Textures.bsa. So once I identify which .bsa I want to extract files from, I open in it FOMM and browse to find the item I want. This is done by either searching by name or simply browsing the categories on the left.</div>
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<div>Once I find the relevant texture file I export it to a folder of my choosing. From there I open the .dds files in Photoshop with nvidia's DDS plugin. From there it is easy to modify the .dds file as with any image file. For the most part I am simply masking off each layer of detail that I want in Photoshop then overlaying custom color schemes, applying brightness/contrast, and change hues, etc. as desired.</div>
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<div>Once I achieve something I find decent I save the file as new .dds file, as well as creating new mipmaps in the process. Then I create the required folder structure within the Skyrim install directory and drop my new model there. Once the game is loaded, my new file is loaded instead of the one within the game and voila, you see the new color/model/etc. Then it is just back and forth between Photoshop and Skyrim to check model consistency, color, errors, etc.</div>
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<div>And Kenneywings, can you explain how you've been interlacing your mods so seamlessly with the UI? Design-wise, your "Display time on loading screen mod" is integrated so well by design.</div>
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<div>KenneyWings: Well as I said, I'm a designer myself and over the course of years I've designed numerous of game interfaces so it wasn't a problem for me to take the Skyrim UI style and add onto it.</div>
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<div>Can you explain how you are finding things like the algorithms for your mod "Lockpick Pro"?</div>
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<div>KenneyWings: While browsing the files I found that the data for the mod was in the game. I re-added in into the game and made sure it fit well with the rest of the UI.</div>
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<div>For returning modders, do you believe Archive Invalidation is going to be needed as with past Bethesda games?</div>
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<div>nickoli002: We will have to see if it is an issue as with past games. I don't know if they have fixed it or not, but since they never did with Oblivion (to my knowledge) I expect it will be needed.</div>
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<div>Do you have any advice for modders who can't wait for the toolkit, and want to start modding now?</div>
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<div>nickoli002: Sure. The biggest piece of advice I can come up with is to just get started on something. It's relatively easy, fun, and there are many tutorials on how to do it. If you need help there are many great places to start and it's never to late to learn. Obviously without the toolkit there are limitations but learning how to do modding, recoloring, and creating your own things is a fun trip, and very satisfying.</div>
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<div>KenneyWings: Unless you've had previous knowledge of Flash you might not want to start with modding the UI. Start with textures, sounds or data/strings. Those are all packed neatly in the game files and can be exchanged and altered without problems.</div>
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<div>Are you planning on going back and revising any of your mods once the toolkit is released?</div>
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<div>nickoli002: Oh yes, most if not all of them. I plan to make all of them separate entities and not just reskins (though I will leave the reskin versions of course). This is because some of the items have bad stats but look amazing, and I want people to wear items they like and not sacrifice game playability.</div>
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<div>KenneyWings: Depends on what the toolkit includes, I don't think it will include data or source files to change the UI but if it does I will go back and revise the mods. Data from Bethesda is always better than data I decompiled.</div>
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<div>My next project is a complete overhaul of the UI, completely made from scratch and not using any Skyrim files. The UI is going to closely resemble the default UI of Skyrim but it'll be tailored to the PC (not gamepads). You can see a preview here. </div>
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<div>Thanks so much to KenneyWings and Nickoli002 for chatting with us! </div>
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<div>Don't forget to check out the latest Skyrim mods on Curse.com and upload your mod to be entered to win the $3,000 grand prize!</div>
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This week, we are proud to announce that Curse has integrated Skyrim support into our Curse Client!

What does this mean for you? It's now incredibly easy and simple to install and manage mods with one click-installs, search for mods in a browseable database, and manage existing .esp and .esm files: complete with load order rearrangement! The client also creates multiple backups during the install and uninstall process, so you will never have to reinstall Skyrim due to one faulty mod!

Check out this video walkthrough below to see just how straightforward our Client makes mod management!

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Authors: Don't forget to use our Packager to get your mods into the Client, gaining you more downloads and exposure, as well as giving your users the simplist method of installation! More information on how the Packager works is available here.

We have an important announcement to make about the ongoing Skyrim $15,000 challenge!

The Skyrim 15k challenge is nearing its end. If you would like to participate you can still do so, just make sure you submit your mod before the deadline. So far over 160 mods have been uploaded to Skyrim Forge and the amount is still growing daily.

To look back on the contest we have listed all of the mod highlights that we have done so far below. We will keep doing these regularly, so don’t worry if your mod has not been featured yet, it might just be the next one!

The categories “UI/Maps” and “Dungeons/Quests” are still open! Mods uploaded under these categories will still be eligible for the prizes listed on the chart.

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If your mod falls under one of the closed categories it does not mean that you are entirely out of luck! If the mod submitted would have been an eligible submission, it will be entered in our $3,000 grand prize giveaway so long as it’s submitted before our deadline, January 31st.